Dinner at Hung Sum

Mom, Andrew, and I were shopping around yesterday and then headed downtown with the intention of grabbing some goods from the ribfest on Sparks Street. We were driving through Chinatown and then a waft of something delicious came through the windows. We all took a deep breath and exhaled in satisfaction.

"Do you want to eat fried rice noodles instead of ribs?" Mom asked as soon as she caught her breath.

"Doesn't matter to me. Andrew?" I threw it to Andrew. Seriously, I didn't care. It was a win-win situation.

"I don't know. What's the plan? Are we going to have ribs?" Andrew asked. What he said was essentially, "the ball's in your court."

"Well if you want to have ribs now, we can still go. If not, we can always grab some ribs tomorrow for lunch." I countered. He's not winning that easily.

Andrew was silent for a minute. "Okay. Then if that's the case, let's stay here (in Chinatown) for dinner."


We parked on Rochester Street and walked down to Hung Sum. I had only been there a handful of times for lunch and was curious about their dinner service. There were two other tables being occupied; one middle-aged couple from Hong Kong, and a group of three older caucasians. It looked like they had just placed their order.

The menu was simple. One one side, there were the dim sum choices and a list of the chef's specials. The other side listed the all the larger dishes. There wasn't anything too special. I checked off what we wanted and gave the menu to the lady.

As we waited for the food to arrive, we watched the table of caucasians receive two steamers of BBQ pork buns (two in each steamer), a steamer of sticky rice (aka lo mai gai), and a plate of cheung fan. Mom scoffed, "they'll get full so fast! At least their bill will be cheap."

Andrew and I killed time by checking out their soy sauce and hot sauce. It used to be my habit to always try a Chinese restaurant's soy sauce. Their hot sauce was the same stuff as most of the other Chinese restaurants use, but Hung Sum's seemed spicier. We both really liked it.


The steamer of tripe and coriander shrimp dumplings arrived. As soon as I saw the shrimp dumplings, I knew that I had ordered the wrong thing again. I wanted to order the dumplings that I had during my first trip. Ah well, they still tasted good - especially with the hot sauce.

[Updated on Sept. 18th, 2013]
The reason why I ordered the wrong thing was because I had mistakenly written the wrong dish. The dumplings I wanted to order are the steamed green onion ginger beef dumplings.

As we devoured the two dishes, we continue to people watch. The table of caucasians got an order of deep-fried squid tentacles, siu mai, and beef balls. "Not bad, they're still hungry."


Our plate of wu gok (aka taro dumplings, taro puffs) arrived. "These are good. This takes too much effort to make. When it's hot like this, it's really good." Mom commented while nodding her head. My jaws dropped. Did she just admit that something wasn't work the effort to make from scratch?


Shortly afterwards, the steamer of shrimp siu mai (not pictured) and plate of rice noodles with beef arrived. Although there were char marks on the noodles, the noodles actually didn't taste smoky at all. How does that happen? It was a bit disappointing. Andrew and Mom enjoyed their house-made noodles.

The caucasians got a plate of eggplants stuffed with shrimp and a plate of youtiao afterwards. "Wow, they're still going. Not bad." I thought to myself.  Mom gave them credit, "they know how to eat." It was quite impressive, considering they started off with the two heavier dim sum dishes.

The amount of food that we ordered was perfect. We were all full and satisfied after the five dishes. The bill was just over $25. I'll definitely be returning to Hung Sum. Mom said she wouldn't mind returning either -- crazy, I know!

Btw, what do you think of this template? I changed it so that the photos we upload stand out.

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Address:

Hung Sum
870 Somerset St W
Ottawa, ON
613-238-8828